


American Elm

by plastics



Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Canon-Typical Microaggressions, F/M, Mpreg, Scheming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:26:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23540794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/pseuds/plastics
Summary: After everything—the arrest, jail, arraignment, the preliminary hearing, indictment, hearings, the trial, sentencing, prison, and a few failed appeals, each step creeping along slower than Ransom could have imagined after how quickly things had unfolded the night of and after—Ransom has a lot of time to think.
Relationships: Marta Cabrera/Ransom Drysdale
Comments: 20
Kudos: 114
Collections: Unusual_Bearings_2020





	American Elm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [libraralien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraralien/gifts).



After everything—the arrest, jail, arraignment, the preliminary hearing, indictment, hearings, the trial, sentencing, prison, and a few failed appeals, each step creeping along slower than Ransom could have imagined after how quickly things had unfolded the night of and after—Ransom has a lot of time to think. 

Too much time to think. Ransom can practically read the direct-from-the-headlines, unauthorized airport thrillers that are being written about him and his family and all the crazy shit they’d done. He sees himself most clearly, and how people will see him: knees squeezed together as they imagine him, desperate and confused, repressed, cut off from the only support he knew, nesting gone wrong— 

Ransom wasn’t lying when he told Marta about the clarity he had that night, that week. Like a knife sterilizing in fire, then cooling hard and sharp.

* * *

The heat wasn’t planned. Ransom almost wished he could say it was, but instead, it just became another piece of the plot that started unraveling, threads fraying. Between everything being set in motion, Ransom forgot to take his pills for a day or two, and he didn’t even fully realize it until he was sitting across from Marta, more pleased than he should be to be feeding her, at the pleased warm-molasses scent wafting off of her.

It was supposed to be simple. Ransom would win the final game. Marta would go directly to jail, do not pass go, certainly do not fucking collect the entirety of his family’s rightful inheritance. Even with the heat, he wasn’t the sort of omega to get all soft and sentimental. It shouldn’t have changed anything. 

Marta beat the old man at GO. That shouldn’t have changed anything, either. But something about it made sense, too, like two winding paths merging and straightening.

* * *

It wasn’t hard to convince Marta to come back to Ransom’s house. She made some noise about wanting the familiarity of home, and Ransom made some noise back about keeping her family out of the crossfire, how persistent his family could be, what this was all going to look like once it blew up. He could tell she still didn’t fully trust him, but it was enough.

Ransom didn’t bring alphas home often. Or anyone, really. He preferred meeting people at their place or bouncing around Airbnbs, if he was even in Boston to start. People got overly familiar, liked to make _his_ space _their_ space, curl up in his Baxter armchair and try to argue about the best pizza place to order from (Vatrano’s, there’s only Vatrano’s).

Marta barely sat at the edge of his barstool, eyed the glass of wine he offered her—she still downed it, though, in three big gulps. He watched her drink it, closely, felt it stir in him shit he had tucked away in grade school.

“So are you just going to watch, then?” Marta said.

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, Ransom. You want me to believe that you just brought me here to keep me safe and serve me Barefoot?”

Ransom scoffed. It was mid-tier at best, sure, but Barefoot? If Ransom was in any other state of mind, he might have been annoyed, turned off. Instead, all he could register was the look in Marta’s eyes, the set of her face. 

Game.

He shrugged, torn between standing tall and leaning close. “We’re adults. This is a stressful time. There are ways we could unwind.”

“Your grandfather is dead. Because I killed him. I told you this less than two hours ago,” Marta said.

“And now you’re getting rich off of it. Live a little.”

She rolled her eyes, but her back stayed straight as Ramson circled the island, brought his hands to her throat. Her gaze didn’t waver. When their lips met, she didn’t fight him, but—challenged him, pushed back just right, dragged him closer. The air around them caramelized.

Marta breathed in deep then leaned back, her brows furrowed but her gaze was hot as she said, “You smell… are you _sure—”_

“I wouldn’t have brought you back here if I wasn’t sure,” Ransom replied.

They didn’t make it to Ransom’s bedroom. That damn Baxter wasn’t even comfortable, Ramson just pulled this entire room from a magazine laying around one of his college buddies’ apartment— _not_ his ex—but if he’d ever cared, he certainly didn’t then.

Marta got them both out of their clothes quickly lingers once she’s got Ransom’s legs open. She kissed down his stomach, mouthed at his dick, worked her small fingers deep into his dripping hole.

“You smell so good,” she moaned, and Ramson’s toes curled as she crawled back over him to press their mouths together, her hands frantic at the hem of her pants.

* * *

Usually, Ransom’s heats dragged on for a few days, even on suppressants.

Marta was asleep by midnight, curled up under a few previously-forgotten blankets Ransom had to dig out of a closet that he hadn’t opened since he got the place. Ransom didn’t sleep as easily, but he still felt sated somewhere deeper than he’d ever known. It was madness. That was the only explanation. He needed to get his plan back on track. Clean up loose threads. Now, that meant stopping by a drug store for Plan B. Easy.

He could have kicked her out. Went into the bedroom. Left altogether, let her get the message the next morning. Instead, Ransom sat on the floor in front of the couch. His laptop burned the tops of his bare thighs. Every time she shifted, he would glance up then watch until she settled again, listening to the sound of her breath.

She snored. Just a little. It was almost cute.

* * *

Ransom wasn’t just _kind of_ showing by the time the trial started and the matter of paternity became public record. It’s his own attorney that worked the angle, too, trying to drum up sympathy, a sense of conspiracy. And it might have worked, too, if it’d been anyone but terrible, honest, beautiful Marta.

* * *

Soft-hearted as Massachusetts liberals are, Ransom’s life sentence came with a guarantee of parole after twenty years. A _chance_ of parole, his attorney stressed, but the way Ransom saw it, it can’t be that hard to emulate rehabilitation, especially compared to most of the guys Ransom was in with. 

She also talked about custody. His parents weren’t bothering to contest on his behalf, and even if they did, the case would be weak. 

Hell, maybe with affirmative action being what it is these days, Harvard will appreciate the thing being part Belizean—

“Cuban,” Marta interrupts. “I’m Cuban, and so is your child. Asshole.”

“You just really enjoy being able to call me that now, don’t you?” Ransom responds. “Look around you, I’m not really lacking in reminders that I’m the asshole.”

And, despite everything, a flash of sympathy flickers across her face. That’s maybe the worst thing about all this; Ransom keeps waiting for the money to really sink in, the way it has for everyone who got too close to his family, every ex who stopped even offering to cover the bill. But even clothes that didn’t come from the Goodwill clearance rack, hair that smells like good shampoo even through the glass wall separating them, Ransom can still plainly see that _goodness_ everyone is so obsessed with.

“So that’s it, then? You’re just going to keep her away from me for the rest of our lives?” Ransom asks.

“Her?” Marta echoes. Ransom hadn’t even recognized it as it came out of his mouth, but the truth of it snaps into place, and suddenly the vague concept living his stomach has dark hair but his own eyes, looking at him with sadness and disappointment and righteousness. And maybe she doesn’t go to Exeter but Boston Latin, instead, before she follows Meg to one of the Seven Sisters and complains about her father being the worst example of white American greed even as it pays her tuition.

Except she’ll be his daughter, too. She won’t make it easy.

“Her,” Ransom says.

Marta’s quiet for a long moment, assessing, before she says, “I don’t know what to tell you, Ransom. You’ve tried to kill the last three people who stood between you and the inheritance. Including your own grandfather. And myself. I can tell you, being raised without a father isn’t some great tragedy, especially with the resources I have now. _Especially_ if the alternative is putting this child in danger.

“But depriving either of you isn’t what I want, either. Doing what you’ve done, being in here, you’re going to miss a lot. It’s up to you whether you’re going to miss everything.”

The ultimatum sends a familiar, trapped panic rising up in him, parallel to the anger. His mind races with ideas, long cons that would unfold in twenty, thirty, _forty_ years. Maybe it’s just heartburn, but it turns his stomach. Whatever the cause, he’s clearly not in any state to be making these types of decisions. Maybe he can just say, “Deal.” See where this goes.


End file.
